United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

Lord Hague of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

We have heard 50 speeches tonight, and I have listened to the vast majority of them. Every single one has raised proper questions and issues. It will, of course, be impossible to respond to all of them in the 16 minutes that remain, but I will do my best to respond to the general themes and to some of the specific questions.

The debate has naturally focused on UN Security Council resolution 1973 and the situation in Libya, but many Members have pointed out that there are wider conclusions to be drawn, and a need to address our policy on the entire region. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), for instance, referred to the dramatic changes that have taken place throughout the region: changes that may already constitute the most important event of the early 21st century—even more important than 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis—in terms of their possible consequences.

If many of the countries of the middle east turn into stable democracies and more open economies, the gains for our security and prosperity will be enormous. If they do not, the potential breeding grounds for terrorism and extremism will prosper. That is why it is so much in our national interest to address these issues, and why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I have argued that the response of the whole of Europe must be as bold, as ambitious and as historic in its intentions as these events are in their nature. We should be holding out to the countries of the middle east the prospect of free trade, areas of customs union and a new economic area with the European Union. We should be providing it with incentives and acting as a magnet for positive change in that region.

We can be optimistic about the prospects for positive change in many of those countries. In Egypt, the Egyptian army’s decision to protect the people kept the spotlight firmly where it was supposed to be—on a Government who had to listen to people’s aspirations. In Tunisia, too, after deplorable violence against unarmed protestors, the Government crumbled, accepting the will of the people and beginning a transformation of the political system. The situation in Libya is completely different. In the past three weeks we have heard reports of soldiers being burned alive for refusing to obey orders to crush the protests. We have seen the use of mercenaries to slaughter civilians, the cutting off of food, electricity and medical supplies to population centres and the broadcast of televised threats to purge whole cities and to hunt down people in their homes. Just today, after the announcement of a second ceasefire by the Gaddafi regime, Reuters has reported that Gaddafi’s forces fired on a crowd of unarmed people late today in the centre of the city of Misrata. In Ajdabiya, there have been reports of body thefts, with military casualties being made to look like civilian casualties. Al-Jazeera reports that Gaddafi’s forces continue to shell the town of Zintan heavily and that they have given residents two hours to surrender or face total execution. That is what passes for a ceasefire according to the Gaddafi regime.

It is against that background that the House has today weighed carefully the arguments that we have presented for and against our military actions. There has been nothing gleeful or gung-ho about the atmosphere in the House and there is nothing gung-ho about the atmosphere in and decisions of the Government. The great majority of hon. Members who have spoken today have spoken in support of the Government’s actions and the motion, and many explained that they did so with reluctance or regret. The Government have approached this issue with the same sense of gravity.

It was fascinating to listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), who spoke of the horror of violence. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster), who has served in three wars in the past decade, pointed out that nobody who has served in them ever wants to be involved in one again. Hon. Members have wrestled with their consciences. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) said that he was debating with himself and for a moment he did, indeed, debate with himself in front of the whole House, which was quite a spectacle. The fact that he should be wrestling with his conscience illustrates the difficulty of the choices we face and the general unity that the House has come to, which is not an automatic or unthinking unity but is because we think it right to act in this situation. We are conscious that any military action can involve loss of life, but we are clear that when our armed forces take action they take the greatest care to avoid civilian casualties. When our pilots were on their mission last night and thought that civilians were in danger, they turned back—what a contrast with a regime that turns its guns on its own people and regards the lives of its citizens as mere shields.

We are clear that we are engaged in this action to protect the civilian population and we were clear, as last week went on, that we had to act with all possible speed. That is why we moved heaven and earth, diplomatically, to pass the UN resolution on Thursday night. Yes, we took a risk in doing that because nine positive votes are required in the Security Council and there can be no vetoes. To have been defeated on that resolution would have made it hard to take any subsequent action, but any later would have been too late. Once the resolution was passed, we had to move with all possible speed. As the House knows, the Cabinet met on Friday morning to consider the UN resolution at length, with the legal advice of the Attorney-General in front of us for all members to read, and the Prime Minister came to the House at the earliest possible moment to state our intention.

Some hon. Members have asked whether the House should have sat on Saturday to consider the motion; of course, in future instances, that can be considered, but they should be clear that to effect the situation, we had to give the orders for military action on Saturday afternoon. Other hon. Members have asked that there be no mission creep. I am happy to assure them that if the Government ever fundamentally change the nature of the mission that we have described to the House, we will return to the House for a further debate to consult it again. We will also enshrine in law for the future the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) quite rightly asked—the shadow Foreign Secretary echoed this—what debate we would be having today had we not taken action last week. How many people would now be wringing their hands? How many would be lamenting the fate of a proud city and the lives of people who live there?

[Jim Dowd]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Hague]

I will mention the hon. Gentleman in a moment, so he can intervene then, but I am trying in a very short time to answer the questions that have been asked. How many extra tens of thousands of people would now be streaming to the borders? We should be proud that our forces were able to respond in time. One of the reasons—the main reason—why people have heard of forces from only the United States, France and the United Kingdom going into action is that they are among the few countries in the world with the capability to act so quickly. It is not necessarily that other countries are unwilling; their capability is not as great.

The reason why we were able to act in that way and win such support at the United Nations is that the support—the call—of the Arab League for a no-fly zone and the protection of the people of Libya was unprecedented. That has had an enormous impact. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) gave the other side of the argument, and asked why Britain should get involved. Given the background—we are one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, one of only three of those members who believed that it was necessary to take action, and one of the few countries with the military capability to do something about the situation—if we had not got involved in the resolution and the action, then such a resolution and such action would probably not have happened at all. That is our responsibility in the United Kingdom, as well as our clear national interest. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, it is not in our national interest for a dangerous dictator with a record of violent acts beyond his own country to run a pariah state on the very edge of the European Union.

[Mr Allen]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hague]

I will not. I give way hundreds of times in other debates, but I am trying to answer the points made today.

It is not in our interests for Egypt and Tunisia to be destabilised. Of course, the action that we have taken is not without risks and dangers to our armed forces and the people we are trying to help, and many hon. Members have highlighted the risks involved, but as the Leader of the Opposition said in a powerful speech, the argument that we do not know the sequence of events to come is not an argument for inaction. As was said by the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd), who was trying to intervene, just because we have made mistakes in the past, it does not mean that we should not try to do something right; I absolutely agree with him.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) made a memorable and powerful speech, and I would love to hear the 60-minute version, not the six-minute version. He reminded us that our mission is to protect human beings, and that the temptation to dig ever deeper in all such situations must be resisted. We are conscious of that in the Government. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) pointed out, we are seeking to implement the United Nations resolution so that the people of Libya can determine their own future. We will make every effort to maintain and consult our broad coalition, closely consulting the Arab League and working with our NATO partners, including Turkey, as several hon. Members have asked us to do.

Some Members asked what the Arab League intended to say. I spoke to Mr Amr Moussa yesterday afternoon—the Prime Minister spoke to him today—and he made it clear to me that he did not mean to criticise the mission, and he supports the UN resolution and its enforcement. Others have asked if our approach is part of a wider approach to the region and a commitment to the middle east peace process; it certainly is. They asked whether we will make conflict prevention central to our policy; yes, of course we do, as we have shown recently in Sudan. They asked whether we will plan for different scenarios, including humanitarian assistance when it is necessary; yes, we certainly are doing so.

Some of my hon. Friends have asked whether this decision showed that an aircraft carrier should have been retained, but I can tell them that the Tornado aircraft that are most suited of all to perform these missions could not have been flown from an aircraft carrier. Other hon. Members have asked whether the costs will be met from the reserve, and I can tell them that they will. We have also been asked to look carefully at all legal advice on the meaning of the arms embargo of paragraph 4 of the resolution, and of course we are doing so.

In the case of Libya, the desire to be rid of a decaying dictatorship has run up against a regime that has shown itself to be one of the most ruthless, unprincipled and savage. The Arab world and the western world care about the civilians of Libya, but their Government do not. We are determined to stop violence, bloodshed and suffering—the very things that the Gaddafi regime is happy to unleash. When the Prime Minister said in the House three weeks ago that we should not just stand by if Colonel Gaddafi used military force against his own people, he was seen by many as being too bold. But he meant what he said, and we mean to stand by his words just as we are standing by the people of Libya.

With our allies and partners, we have carried through the United Nations Security Council a resolution that is clear, unequivocal and comprehensive, and that leaves the legality of what we are now doing not in the slightest doubt. We have acted at the behest of the Arab League, and are joined by Arab nations. We have taken every care to ensure that doubts about lawfulness and regional support, such as those that have dogged earlier decisions, do not apply in this case. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) said, we are right to act but right not to act alone.

This is not the west imposing its views on Libya; it is the world saying that the people of Libya should be allowed to express their views without their Government setting out to slaughter them. We are not trying to choose the future Government of Libya. That is a matter for Libyans, who must find their own solution to the mis-government that they have been subjected to, but this resolution, and our enforcement of it, gives them their only chance of being allowed to do so. This is not a legal fudge or a questionable interpretation of international law; it is the rigorous application of international law. Our actions are all the stronger for the breadth and determination of the international coalition, but they are also stronger for the breadth and determination of this House, which we have seen today.

The brave members of our armed forces who have patrolled the skies above Benghazi today or flown through the night to destroy the air defences of a regime that used air power against its own citizens can know that they do so armed not only with the weaponry that they are so well trained to deploy but with every advantage of knowing that what they do is legally warranted, morally necessary, internationally supported and, I hope, democratically agreed through a vote of this House of Commons. They can have the satisfaction of knowing that, in precipitating the retreat of Gaddafi’s forces from Benghazi, they have already averted a catastrophe and a new outpouring of human misery. In pressing our case at the United Nations, in insisting that what we do must be legal, in taking extreme care to protect civilians and in acting with a speed and precision that few armed forces on Earth can rival, this country is doing what it said it would do, doing what is absolutely right and joining in giving a lead to the world, and it should enjoy the united support of the House tonight.

Question put.